Sedimental Sentiments
by Kiyyt
Summary: Everything changed after David disappeared. No one wanted to admit it, but they noticed.
1. Justification

He was a bit odd, as they remembered. He had once spoken of his dragon. If it had been a passing remark, then it wouldn't have been so weird, but the way he had spoken of it (Gadoot...Gadzoot, or something like it) had made it seem like he thought the dragon was real. Like a real person or something.

It was then everyone in the department realized. David wasn't just eccentric. No, he was crazy. Pretty much everyone had avoided him after that. He was just so...odd. His obsession with dragons and his constant muttering to himself and scribbling random symbols and words on whatever paper he could find pretty much ensured that he was a loner. It was a shame too. He seemed nice enough, but no one wanted to be friends with the class crazy.

After that, they pretty much left him to be by himself. Oh sure, they were never deliberately mean to him. David was too nice of a guy for that. But every once in a while, at study sessions (which they had forgotten to invite him to) a joke was made at his expense or the latest rumour concerning him came up.

_Careful there. You're starting to sound like Rain. _

_I heard he's off his meds or something, and that's why he acts so weird._

They'd all have a laugh or shrug and continue on with their lives, not even thinking about it too much. No, they were never cruel to him. They just excluded him a bit, but it was okay because he liked to be alone anyways, right?

And it wasn't like he was alone. He had that girl, Zanna, the Goth. Those two had seemed to hit it off. So it wasn't like they just left him out of everything. He just enjoyed Zanna's company more than theirs. She listened to his crazy stories about his dragon and even enjoyed it. So it was probably better that those two hung out, but not with everyone else.

Once it became obvious that the two of them weren't going anywhere, they _meant_ to invite them to the group study sessions and stuff, but had just forgotten. Honestly. But they never felt bad about it or apologized for forgetting, they just hadn't mentioned anything to him. They knew he knew about the study sessions he wasn't invited to. He had come in with a lady once (a younger lady, but older than all of them). He had seen them, but chose to just give a small smile of acknowledgement to let them know he had noticed them. They all felt a bit guilty after that encounter, but the feeling quickly was forgotten and replaced with questions.

_Who was that woman?_

_How did she know "Zany" David? _

Plus, it wasn't like he needed the extra study time. He was brilliant and Dr. Bergstrom had taken a real shine to him. It wasn't like he _needed _help in the class. No, he was doing fine in the class. Better than fine. So it didn't make sense to invite him to a study session, right?

It wasn't that they didn't like him. That was just wrong. No, he was nice enough. He was just strange.

Just a bit odd.

Maybe in a few weeks he'd calm down and then they'd welcome him with open arms. Yeah, he was probably nervous and rambling before. He'd probably get more comfortable with everyone soon and then they would get more comfortable with him (Maybe then he could come to one of their study sessions and give them some pointers while they studied of something).

They like David, but they'd have to wait until he chilled out some to try to make friends with him. But that wouldn't be very long now.

Right?


	2. Legal Issues

David was dead.

They knew it was true. They just couldn't prove it. Why else would he just disappear from the expedition so suddenly? What else could have happened to him? Contrary to what they heard, they _knew _he didn't just quit and go home. No, he was too dedicated and driven to do that. What they did know was that he had a habit of getting into trouble. Or rather, trouble had a habit of finding him, so it really shouldn't have been a surprise that something like this would happen to him in the dangerous Arctic.

All they had were clues that pointed to Rain's death, but nothing definite.

Not a body.

All they had was some bloody ice and a distraught Zanna. And they couldn't get her to talk about it, at least not enough to firmly establish what happened up there that night. All they knew for sure was David had been seriously wounded somehow and then something had happened to his body. From the disjointed recount they got from Zanna, some polar bears had taken his body.

They probably weren't going to get it back. Not after this long.

Not that they hadn't tried. For _days_ they had searched, hoping to find some evidence that he was out there, still alive. They searched every square inch of land nearby and even went out of their way to search for their missing colleague. But they days turned into a week and a week turned into two, and they gave up hope that he was still living because even if he _had_ still been alive when he disappeared, logic and math and_ everything else they believed in_ said he would be dead when they found him. It had just been too long.

They couldn't declare him dead. Not according to the university's standards. No. Before this hit the fan, they wanted a body as proof and no one could give that to them. Not that they hadn't tried. They had tried to recover it, but eventually the ice just...ended and there was no way to track the bears.

They had even checked in the water where the ice had ended, just in case. They had sent down a little camera that they usually used for data collection, but the water was deep and the waterproof seal on the camera had started to leak. They had to pull it back up before it broke completely and destroyed the equipment. But not before seeing something down there. A glove and a hat it appeared like on the monitor they were using. And they were connected to something, but it was too poorly lit to see. But it looked like a body. If that were the case, then Zanna had been mistaken. But that wasn't a big surprise. She had seen a horrible, horrible thing up there.

They tried to retrieve the hat and gloves and whatever, or whoever, it was connected to, but they were too deep in the water and the ice had begun to freeze over again. In the end, they had to settle for _knowing_ where David was, but not being able to get to him. Somehow, that was worse than not knowing.

But, regardless of this, they couldn't get a clear enough image of what was under the ice, so they couldn't prove that David Rain had met his unfortunate death while on the expedition. He had just vanished. According to the university, anyways. They weren't going to take the blame for a dead student if they could help it and to them no body or no picture of a body meant that he wasn't dead, not legally. Just missing. If a body turned up, they'd change his status, but for now, he was just gone.

Nobody who was on that trip was fooled. They knew exactly what was going on as soon as the university released its official statement. If they said he was missing it became David's fault. He should have followed the guidelines we set up for his safety, which he agreed to. He should have stayed with his group; at the very least he should have stayed with his partner. However, if they said he was dead, then it became the university's fault, and their problem. They should have paid closer attention to their researchers. It was unsafe up in the Arctic, why send college students to do such a dangerous job, just look what happened under their "supervision".

The entire expedition was outraged when they heard about that. Rain was dead. They had seen his body in the footage themselves, but the school had dismissed their testimonies and the footage as not clear enough to verify. And now they were denying it? What _was_ this?

A cover-up. It just reeked of a cover-up.

And they could do nothing.

Once again, they could do nothing as everything, as the truth, slipped out of their control and sank into the icy depths of the Arctic, never to be seen again.


	3. Leaving

Packing up and leaving the research site was hard. Leaving meant that they were giving up and _forgetting _about their missing classmate and colleague. It didn't feel right to anyone, but they couldn't stay indefinitely, waiting.

Zanna had left shortly after David die- _disappeared_. She couldn't handle being so close to the site where it all happened (whatever _had_ happened). Not that anyone could blame her. It must have hurt knowing what had happened and having to see the place it all happened every day.

The hardest part was going into his section of the tent (he shared with a roommate) to gather his belongings to give back to his family. Like somehow that would make everything okay and replace their son or brother or whatever.

Sorting through his belongings, they learned more about David then they had ever bothered to learn before.

He didn't appear to have any living relatives (Did they die too?).

He lived as a tenant with a family called the Pennykettles, but they had all but adopted him. (Oh God. Did they know?) A mother, a little girl, a cat, and lots of clay _dragons._

He had a girlfriend that had broken-up with him a few months earlier before she had left to work in Africa. (There was a picture in a little green album)

His dragon, _Gadzooks, _was a sort of muse for him.

He wrote in his spare time.

All the things that they should have known about him _before_ he disappeared came out now. _Afterwards. _After it was too late to do anything to tell him they had been _wrong _about him. That they had judged him too quickly; before knowing certain things about him.

They boxed up all of his stuff and brought it on the plane back to Scrubbley. They had tried to draw straws to see who would actually give his belongings to his family, but they stopped because it had felt so _wrong. _They all decided to be there when that happened.

His family, the Pennykettles, were waiting at the airport when the plane landed (with one less passenger than it should have had). All of them were there when they handed over the box. (The little girl was crying and it broke everyone's hearts). Zanna was there. She was with his family. She looked a little less sad than when they last saw her, but not by much. It was probably because she wasn't constantly staring at reminders of _him._

The woman told Zanna '_He did what he had to do.' _and it seemed like it was a strange thing for her to say, but Zanna and the girl seemed to get some comfort from it. (And so did they. It made his death seem a bit less pointless.)

The lady (the mother. _David's_ mother, for all intents and purposes) was trying not to cry, but it wasn't working very well. She wasn't taking this well. No one was.

_But he did what he had to do._


	4. The Desk

Geography at the University was a small department.

It was an even smaller class. Despite this, only a handful of students had gone on the expedition. But news travelled quickly and the entire department had heard about what had happened before they had returned.

It was hard to come back and see an empty seat where David had once sat. For everyone.

Despite not being close to many people in the department, David was greatly missed by everyone he had ever interacted with.

The girl he shared a book with when she forgot hers.

The boy he lent a pen to rewrite his lab report because Dr. Bergstrom wouldn't accept it written in pencil.

Just because they didn't talk to him that much didn't mean they didn't like him. They certainly didn't want him to _die_. But from what it seemed like, he had and it was hard to sit next to or behind or _near _an empty seat that you _knew _should be occupied by a slightly strange, but still kind young man with so much potential. And it was just gone. He was just gone and wouldn't come back. Couldn't come back.

For a while it was weird to come back from the weekend and not see Rain sitting in the front row, notebook already open and scribbling something down. Or to leave the coffee shop after a study session and not run into him doing something mysterious with a lady none of them had seen before and never saw again. He would smile, but never hold it against you that he wasn't invited. Ever. It was so weird to be there knowing David wouldn't be there ever again. It still was weird, but they managed to pretend not to notice.

They tried to ignore the nagging guilt they all felt.

_If I had only been nicer..._

_If I had only tried to talk to him again...._

_If only...._

_If only...._

They tried not to notice the emptiness in the room (Funny how they just realized how much of an impact he had on the energy in the room) and how much energy he had given everyone just by being there.

And all he had left behind was a stupid empty desk.


	5. Recovering

It took awhile, but they were all finally starting to heal. They would not longer wince when someone mentioned Rain's name or feel the surge of uncontrollable sorrow when they noticed his absence. It still hurt, but not as much as it once had.

Perhaps it was Zanna finally moving on with her life.

Perhaps it was seeing how Lucy (that sad and sweet little girl) couldn't move on with hers.

Regardless of what it was, they all noticed it happening. It had started off a small gesture. Someone mentioned something vaguely involving David in passing and the brief, stabbing pain through the heart hadn't been as bad.

They weren't completely healed. Some still had nightmares about what likely happened on the ice that night (there was so much blood...), but for the most part everyone had started to recover.

Sure, they still half-expected to see Rain sitting at his desk when they walked into class as if the past few months had been nothing but a horrible dream and no time had passed. It still caused a twinge of sadness when he wasn't there.

For the rest of the year, David's desk was still empty (it was the one thing that no one could bear to change), Zanna was still sad, and David was still gone. Nothing had changed, but everything had.

The most painful thing was graduation. As they sat in their alphabetically arranged seats, the empty chair between 'Stower' and 'Reynolds' was never more conspicuous. His diploma, printed before the expedition, was still in the stack. When no one stepped forward to receive it, it was almost unbearable. His family accepted his diploma on his behalf.

Somehow, that made it worse.

It was easier after graduation. Most of them got regular, nine-to-five jobs and didn't have much time to think about the past.

Some of them even picked up Rain's book when it came out (it was surprisingly good and made them smile thinking of him writing it for his little sister because she wanted a book about squirrels). They could just picture him fretting about in his typical fashion in the library trying to find Lucy a book simply because she wanted one and he couldn't bear to see her be disappointed.

Before they knew it, years had passed. In those years, they had lost contact with other former geography students and even forgotten others, but no one ever forgot David. And not the David that the world knew (or wanted to know), but the real David. The one who loved dragons and was really, really bad at foosball and never took anything personally (even if it kinda was). It was just a part of the process.


	6. Come and Go

Rain's reappearance was equally unexpected.

He was thought dead by the world, but after five years in the Arctic he had just shown up again in Scrubbley as if nothing had changed in the past years. But things had changed. They had changed. He had changed. But despite this, the few of them that were still in Scrubbley made sure to stop by to try to see him. Even if he didn't remember who they were (And he might not. Who knows what happened to him while he was gone?), it would do them good to see him alive and (hopefully) well.

He was bigger, bulkier than anyone remembered (and he was never a small guy to begin with). His voice was deeper, gruffer. His entire posture was relaxed, but poised to fight at any given time. His eyes were no longer the vibrant, innocent eyes that they had been so familiar with. They had become slightly colder, more thoughtful, and jaded (and that made them wonder what had happened in the Arctic. What he had seen. What he had done.), but they still had the same kindness and energy that every one of them remembered from their brief time together. It was like he had become a complete stranger.

But at the same time, David himself had changed little.

His laughter was still as recognizable as it was contagious and still brought everyone nearby into fits of uncontrollable giggles. He was still always willing to help by lending a helping hand or a listening ear. And they knew that if he needed somewhere quiet to think, he'd still probably be found at the Library Garden. That much was the same.

But he was older somehow, more distant. He wasn't a twenty-something student or amateur author anymore (if he could even be called that. He was a published bestseller now). It was like he was an old man trapped in David's body. Like he had seen it all and had fulfilled his purpose in life. Like he was just waiting for something, one final moment, before he was gone forever (And somehow that thought seemed less disturbing now. It was like they all knew that he had done what he had to do and that it was time for him to go).

And he never actually answered the question of where he was for five years. In fact, he expertly avoided answering that question every time the question was asked. A reporter would ask and he'd seamlessly change the subject. Most of the time, even the reporter didn't notice until it was too late to do anything about it.

It probably would have been easier to try to get an answer out of him had he not been so kind. Had he been a rude person, their ruthlessly seeking the answers to questions would have been a lot easier. Justifiable, even. Then they wouldn't have felt bad about possibly offending him or hurting his feelings. But somehow, him being so friendly made it harder to try to get an answer out of him (He didn't want to talk about it. That much was obvious). And so they wondered, but respected his wishes.

It was all incredibly odd, and it made everyone all the more curious as to what he was hiding. (It wasn't a question of if he was hiding something anymore. It was obvious that he was hiding something. It was just a question of what it was).

And then he was gone again. And this time they never did see him again. But somehow, they knew that this time everything was going to be okay.


End file.
